Publishing for tomorrow: a review of Ingenta's US Publisher Forum
As in previous years, we held our US Publisher Forum to coincide with the Annual Meeting of the Society of Scholarly Publishers, and Dumbarton House in Washington DC once again provided a beautiful setting for the event. IngentaConnect Vice President Douglas Wright opened with a short business update. Doug explained how our new organisational structure has allowed us to focus more closely on the specific, and differing, technology and service needs of the customers in each of our three divisions (IngentaConnect, Information Commerce and PCG).
Doug then introduced our first speaker, Toni Tracy of not-for-profit archiving organisation Portico. Toni explained Portico's business and operational models, and took care to note that preservation of electronic publications within the Portico archive focuses on "content and context", not visual format. A pilot project is underway with 10 publisher participants, incorporating a sufficiently diverse range of content and formats to provide a broad reflection of the potential issues in archiving e-journals. Toni also clarified that, in line with increasingly standard archiving practice, access to the Portico archive of a publisher's content is only enabled following a "trigger event", for example, if a publisher ceases to operate. (For a comprehensive, on the spot report of Toni's paper, including delegate questions and a link to Toni's slides, see this posting on our All My Eye blog).
IngentaConnect's Head of Client Management Louise Tutton followed Toni with a presentation (download .pps) about the latest trends within the information industry and how these have influenced recent developments at Ingenta. For example, the launch of our All My Eye blog is in line with increasing interest in community-based social software, whilst our new server and increased capacity in China reflects the enthusiasm of our industry as a whole to engage with this vast new market.
Helen Henderson, of Ringgold, then took the podium to explain her organisation's work in rationalising the identifiers used to classify institutions that subscribe to scholarly publications, which amongst other things enables larger publishers to analyse the full extent of an institution's licensing and usage. A pilot program is in place to ascertain the potential benefits of using a single, unique identifier throughout the journal supply chain. (For our full report, including delegate questions and a link to Helen's slides, see this posting).
Senior Information Architect Lucy Power, of our Information Commerce Division, presented (download .pps) the concept and applications of Information Architecture, the practice of structuring information interfaces to be intuitive and easy to learn. Central to any user interface (be it, for example, a website, a road sign, or a retail point-of-sale system) is its ability to communicate two key answers: what is it, and what can I do with it? Since a poor interface can cause, at best, hesitation (and thus lost time) and, at worst, errors, cost savings can be made by incorporating information architecture into site design. At Ingenta, we use IA to support our clients' understanding of their users, and thus their definition of their needs; this in turn reduces risk during site developments, by ensuring that comprehensive and realistic requirements are documented from the outset.
Mary Page, Head of Acquisitions at Rutgers University, bravely took the floor to tell our publisher audience "what libraries really want". The presentation was very well received ("those publishers", said one Ingenta attendee, "really sat up and listened") and delivered some unexpected news; for example, Mary debunked the myth that electronic collections cost less than paper collections, and noted that ever-decreasing budgets actually makes libraries less inclined to purchase bundled subscriptions, despite these purportedly offering better value for money. Mary has recently completed a term as President of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), and commented on the value of such groups that enable publishers and libraries to collaborate and share their respective issues and constraints. (Again, for our full report, see this blog posting).
IngentaConnect Engineering Manager Leigh Dodds then gave a fascinating review of the hot topic that is Web 2.0 (a term coined to describe the next wave of online potential following the bursting of the "dotcom" bubble some years ago). As social, business and technology trends converge, so it becomes evident that there is considerable revenue potential in what is often termed "the long tail", or the "tail of the dog", i.e., those niche consumers to whom it was previously not economically viable to reach out, but whom emerging technological capabilities now enable us to address more efficiently. Increasingly, it is possible to harness evolving technologies (e.g. maturing browsers) to capitalise on new revenue streams by delivering more of what our users actually require. (Leigh cited Ingenta's Metastore as an example of a Semantic Web technology being used to provide a richer platform for presenting a breadth of research content to web-savvy users).
The event closed with a drinks reception on Dumbarton House's sun-drenched terrace. Roll on next year!